


You Make Me Crazy

by blue_jack



Category: Inception
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2011-03-19
Updated: 2011-03-19
Packaged: 2017-11-16 01:14:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,703
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/533863
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blue_jack/pseuds/blue_jack
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It was like inviting a tornado into his room, and he had no one to blame but himself for the condition of his place afterward.</p>
            </blockquote>





	You Make Me Crazy

“You’re so mean to Eames,” Ariadne chided as she flopped down on his bed.

“What are you talking about?” He frowned, starting to shuffle things around on his desk. That was the problem with hosting a study group with Eames in it. He always had his hands into everything, and it would take Arthur days sometimes to find stuff afterward. Not to mention he was messy, leaving crumbs on the carpet from whatever snack he'd filched from Arthur's stash. It was like inviting a tornado into his room, and he had no one to blame but himself for the condition of his place afterward.

“Eames! You just—you could be a little nicer to him is all I’m saying.”

“I’m just as nice to him as I am to everyone else.” Was that—was that a pair of his boxers hanging over the side of his portable fan? How had they gotten there without him noticing? He supposed he should take comfort in the fact that it was one of his instead of a pair he didn't recognize or something else substantially more obscene. He wouldn't put it past Eames to decide to liven up his decor.

“That’s exactly my point!” He could tell from the irritated tone of her voice that she was rolling her eyes. “Considering how he feels about you, you should be nicer.”

“How he feels?” he asked absently as he grabbed the boxers, stuffing them into his laundry basket, before moving the seat Eames had been using back into the corner and tossing the beanbag—when had he bought a beanbag chair? And was that a . . . lava lamp?—off to the side. There. Back to normal. Ish. Lava lamp?

“Oh, don’t play dumb. It's so obvious.”

He swiveled the chair to his desk around and sat down, returning her skeptical look with one of his own. “I assure you that I had absolutely no clue what you were talking about. That being said, however, it's not hard to guess what you're implying, in which case that's probably one of the craziest things I've ever heard. Eames doesn’t like me ‘that way.’” He added the air quotes, knowing it would make her smile.

“Stop it.” He could see her lips twitch. “Eames _does_ like you. _That way_. And fine, you don't reciprocate—which boggles the minds, because have you _seen_ him? He's _gorgeous_ —but you should at least be more sympathetic—”

“When have you ever known me to be sympathetic?” He laughed, catching the pillow she’d thrown at him. “Okay, let’s just assume for argument’s sake that we lived in the Twilight Zone, and it was theoretically possible that Eames was interested in me. And even in this alternate dimension, I’m still not conceding that Eames actually _is_ , just that it’s possible. So now that we're cheerfully inhabiting this hypothetical and delusional universe, what leads you to believe that Eames has feelings below the belt line for me?”

“You're such a nerd, Arthur. And it’s not just—well, I mean, he probably does want to—but that’s not _all_ he wants to do! You can just tell, okay?” she said, throwing up her hands.

“Because of the way he makes snide remarks and argues with me every chance he gets and mocks my clothing and—”

“That’s just his way of flirting!”

“Uh huh. We are talking about the same Eames, aren’t we? About my height? Lots of tattoos? Is always calling everyone stupid pet names like ‘luv’ or ‘darling’ and can frequently be found making out in the library stacks—”

“He’s sublimating!"

She winced at his expression.

“Okay, fine, he’s kind of a slut. But I really do think it’s just because he wants you and knows he can’t—damn it, don’t _laugh_ —he’s acting just like a boy on the playground, pulling the pigtails of the girl he likes!”

“And in this scenario,” Arthur said, sobering and one eyebrow beginning to rise, “I’m supposed to be the girl?”

She winced. “Not exactly. Sort of. I mean, yeah. It’s just a simile—”

“One that needs a lot of work,” he muttered under his breath.

“We're getting off track here. Focus, Arthur, focus! Haven’t you ever noticed the way he looks at you, Arthur? Like he can’t take his eyes off you? Like he could just stare at you for hours?”

He thought about it. “No.”

“Oh, whatever. I don’t know why I even try,” she huffed, slouching against the wall. “Just be nicer to him. Asshole.”

\-----

Arthur went over the conversation again later that night as he lay in bed, waiting to fall asleep. Eames in love with him? Or having some kind of crush/fascination/weird fixation with him? (The last seemed the most plausible although still random.)

It wasn’t that he’d never thought of Eames before in a more than friendly—alright, sexual—context, but that was all it had ever been: idle thoughts and one surprisingly graphic but not as graphic as he would have preferred dream. But dreams were one thing, real life another, and truthfully? He and Eames argued all the time. _All the time_. And they weren't friends. They were—he didn't know what to call them really. They ended up working on projects together a lot whenever they were in the same class—which was remarkably often considering they had different majors, but it was like they picked all the same non-core credits—because apparently arguing was good for getting As. But they had never hung out in a social setting, neither of them had even suggested it, and if Eames liked him, wouldn't he have at least asked him for coffee or something? Because as he'd pointed out to Ariadne, it wasn't like Eames was shy.

And the way Eames looked at him? Arthur had never noticed him looking particularly affectionate. Combative, yes. Frustrated. Fed up. Like he wanted to punch Arthur. All of those, but affectionate? Yeah, not so much.

Ariadne had no idea what she was talking about.

\-----

Arthur eyed Eames suspiciously. It was the third time in the past twenty minutes that Eames had accidentally touched him, and he was starting to wonder. And it wasn’t like anything had been exceptionally overt, but after that ridiculous talk with Ariadne . . .

After all, considering Eames had come over to work, shouldn’t he have remembered to bring his own pen or pencil instead of asking to borrow one of Arthur's? And did he really need to walk quite so close to Arthur on his way to the bathroom? And the room was small, but surely Eames didn't _have_ to bring his chair that close?

Had Eames always been so touchy? Or maybe he had been but was just that touchy with everyone? Hell, he had to be. Arthur hadn’t been kidding when he’d told Ariadne that it wasn’t too unusual to find Eames in the library stacks with his tongue down some girl’s or guy’s throat. Arthur had stumbled on him—once, even literally—at least six times in the past few months. Why he had to pick the Architecture section for his rendezvouses when other areas had less traffic—

“Something wrong, mate?”

Arthur blinked and realized he’d been staring at Eames with a big frown on his face. Which actually wasn’t that unusual now that he thought about it, although he normally had some critical comment to go along with the staring. Maybe Ariadne had a point. A very small one. But. Maybe.

“You can keep the pencil,” he said to cover for himself, not that he’d ever planned to accept it back anyway. Eames had an oral fetish that was positively Freudian, and he’d been gnawing on the pencil so much that Arthur could already see the wood underneath the yellow paint in spots. He did not, Arthur assured himself, find all the chewing and sucking and lip licking appealing in any shape or form.

“Oh, right.” Eames smiled sheepishly. “Thanks.”

Arthur wrenched his eyes away, gazing blindly at the book in his lap. He’d always known on some level that Eames was attractive; he wasn’t blind after all. But knowing Eames was attractive and realizing Eames was attractive _to him_ were two entirely different matters.

And while that was annoying, what was more annoying was that the whole thing was interfering with his life. He’d spent more time in the past few days thinking about Eames with his loud voice and louder shirts than he had in the past four years that he'd known him, and all because of what? Because Ariadne wanted to see something that wasn't there?

Why the hell had he ever gotten into that conversation with Ariadne in the first place? He should've just ignored her, or changed the subject, or made fun of her ubiquitous scarves, which always got a rise out of her because she didn't actually wear them that frequently, but everyone thought she did. The whole thing was all . . . power of suggestion or something equally asinine, and he would quite happily have blamed her for it, except she wasn’t even there, bailing out of the study session five minutes before they were supposed to meet and leaving him all alone with Eames.

He glanced up furtively just in time to see him wipe a stray drop of saliva from the corner of his mouth that had escaped during his manic woodchuck impersonation with the heel of his hand, and that wasn’t supposed to be sexy at all, except somehow it damn well was.

Fucking Ariadne. Fucking Eames. Fucking _life_.

He wondered if Eames would notice if he quietly went insane in the corner.

\-----

“Ariadne.” He grabbed her by the arm, yanking her into the hallway where he’d been lying in wait until she’d walked out of her class.

“Arthur! My, what a surprise! Such a wonderful surprise,” she said weakly. “I really was sick yesterday, I swear! I had a fever and a horrible cough.” She coughed pitifully to emphasize her point, tugging at his hold and simultaneously checking to make sure there were still witnesses around. “And then this morning, I was miraculously better! Yay me!”

He rolled his eyes. “I don’t care about yesterday or your horribly unsubtle attempt to get me alone with Eames.”

“You don’t?” she asked, perking up and no longer trying to escape.

“No. I wanted to talk to you because . . .” He took a deep breath. “I think you’re right. I think Eames likes me.”

“ _Really_? Because I wasn’t actually serious about that. I was just teasing.”

Arthur could feel his whole face go slack with horror.

She giggled. “Just kidding! Yeah, he’s totally into you. Like head over heels, crazy in love with you. Why? Did something happen yesterday?”

It took him a second before he could say anything, and when he did, his voice was strangled. “I hate you. No, I _loathe_ you. As a matter of fact, I _never_ liked you, and—"

"You love me, and you know it." She slipped her arm through his and started dragging him toward the nearest exit. "And besides, who else would you talk to about this kind of stuff? Mal's studying abroad this semester, so Dom? Yusuf? _Nash_? You're stuck with me, buddy. Now spill."

" _You're_ the reason I even started thinking about this—"

"Yeah, yeah, yeah, you can thank me later. So what happened yesterday?"

Arthur glared for a few seconds before deflating and letting himself be led away. He could already tell they were heading off-campus for Ariadne's favorite coffee shop where he'd no doubt be paying, but it wasn't anything less than he'd expected when he sought her out.

"I didn't believe you at first. Me and Eames? Impossible. But then yesterday, well, he either has no concept of personal space or was making a point of touching me, so I . . .” He sighed. “I actually thought it would prove that he _wasn't_ interested in me."

She gasped. "Arthur, what did you _do_?"

"I . . .” he swallowed, “I smiled at him when he was getting ready to leave," he said miserably.

She stopped walking, forcing him to stop as well. "Um, yeah? And?"

“And then he . . . he tripped over his chair."

"He what?" she asked, a huge grin starting to spread across her face.

"He nearly fell over his damn chair! Because I smiled at him!"

"I hate to think what he would've done if you'd gotten naked."

"Will you be serious for one second? _Can_ you be?" He shook his head and started moving again. "Who does that? Who trips over stuff because a person smiles?"

"Someone in loooooooooooooove."

"Have I mentioned lately that I hate you?"

"Like one minute ago. So then what happened?"

"I thought it was a coincidence. So I . . . I did it again."

" _Arthur_."

"How was I to know it'd happen twice?" he demanded acerbically, before looking to the side and muttering, "Except he'd already gotten up, and that time he walked into the door jamb."

"He did not!" Ariadne looked like she was going to start jumping up and down, she was so excited. "Arthur,” she began, no doubt trying to sound solemn but failing horribly, “you have to promise me that you'll only use your power for good."

“I will stop talking to you about this, you know. Just see if I don’t.” It was lie, but he doubted she’d be willing to call him on it.

“But—” She pouted. “It's like you're sucking all the joy out of life," she complained, pulling away and folding her arms across her chest. "Oh fine. So then what?”

“Then nothing. I said ‘see you next week,’ and he left.”

“What? That’s it? No . . . avowals of undying love or passionate sex against the wall? Or both maybe? Really? Nothing?”

“I literally don’t know what to say to you in moments like this,” Arthur commented after a long pause, and he just kept walking, because that seemed the appropriate thing to do.

“Hmph. You’re no fun. So what are you going to do now?”

“I am considering my options.”

“Oh my gosh, you both will have graduated, gotten married and had two point three kids by the time you make up your mind. Jump him. Jump himmmm.”

“Yes, well, I can see where you’re casting your vote—not that you _have_ a vote in this—however—”

“You like him, right? At least a little bit. You wouldn’t have been so curious if you didn’t care at all.”

“He’s not . . . unattractive,” he conceded grudgingly. “And I suppose he’s not—”

She gasped. “You’re in love with him! You’re in love with Eames!”

“I’m not—” His eyes darted around wildly, and his hand twitched with the urge to cover her mouth. “I said he wasn’t unattractive! I didn’t say anything about—”

“That’s like a normal person gushing with compliments! _Overflowing_ with love!"

"What are you suggesting? I'm normal!" he said, stung.

"Arthur, you are brilliant and resourceful and so freaking capable that it's actually difficult to be around you sometimes, and you can wear a suit like nobody's business, but you are not normal. But neither is Eames, so you're in good company."

"And am I supposed to believe that _you're_ normal?" he asked skeptically.

"No, I'm _amazing_. But that's beside the point. You're just trying to distract me. Arthur's in love, Arthur's in love," she singsonged. "Eames and Arthur, sitting in a tree, K-I-S—"

"What are you, five? I already said you were wro—"

"Pffffft. Arthur, until a week ago, you didn't even know Eames liked you, so I hardly think you're the person to consult when it comes to feelings and emotional revelations. Trust me, give it another week and you'll be writing bad poetry and doodling little hearts in your notebook."

"I will not," he said, and he wasn't sulking, he wasn't, and to prove that, he held the door open for her and glared at anyone and everyone. He couldn't be expected to know everything, could he? So maybe he'd let _one_ little detail slip by him, but now he knew, and he could work with it, no problem.

"Uh huh. Keep telling yourself that.” She walked by him, surrounded by a cloud of light perfume and smug satisfaction.


End file.
